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Archival description area

Name of creator

Biographical history

Grace Edith Williams was born on August 28, 1919 in Lower West Jeddore, Nova Scotia. She was the fourth of five children born to Edgar ‘Stuart’ Williams (1881-1961) and Ada Hannah Harpell (1888-1977).

Grace attended school in West Jeddore until grade eleven and then proceeded to obtain her grade twelve through correspondence. She married Roy Avard Forsythe on January 24, 1940 and worked at a variety of jobs in Halifax throughout the 1940s. Together Grace and Roy had one son, Michael George. Grace and Roy divorced in 1947 and Grace went back to school, graduating from the Provincial Normal College in 1949 and continuing to further her education by doing extension work through Dalhousie University. Her first teaching position was in Seabright, followed by positions at various other communities along the Eastern Shore including Pleasant Point from1953 to 1954. She taught at Robert Jamieson High School in 1957, was principal at Jeddore-Lakeville in 1961, and later taught at Eastern Shore District High and schools in Dartmouth and Spryfield. During the summers she continued her own studies and graduated from Mount Allison University with her Bachelor of Arts degree in 1976.

A member of the West Jeddore United Baptist Church, president of the United Baptist Women’s Missionary Society and the Mission Band as well as the first Girl Guide leader in her area in 1953, she was very involved in community and school organizations. She was a member of the Red Cross, also involved in organizing Junior Red Cross Societies in schools and was awarded a Badge of Service for her efforts in 1965 and again in 1987. In addition, she was a Charter member of the Marine Highway Historical Society and the Nova Scotia Genealogy Society, having done much of the initial work for those organizations and holding the positions of secretary treasurer and later president of the Marine Historical Society as well as being a co-editor of their publications together with Helen Jennex.

After retiring in the early1980s, Grace spent several years at the Salmon River House, which was owned by her aunt and uncle, Cora and Sandy Myers. She remained there until she moved to Dartmouth in 1988. Grace then spent time travelling overseas before moving to the Royal Court Retirement Residence (now the Parkland Estates Royal Court) in Riverview, New Brunswick in 2001 to be near her family. She passed away there on September 26, 2014 at the age of ninety-five.

Custodial history

Records were created and accumulated by Grace Edith (Williams) Forsythe and were kept by Grace and her family until they were donated to the Eastern Shore Archives by Grace and her son Michael in 2007 and 2009.

Additional records accessioned as 2011.001 are a separate acquisition, transferred to the Eastern Shore Archives from Nova Scotia Archives and Records Management (NSARM) in 2011.

Scope and content

Consists of records created and accumulated by Grace Edith Forsythe primarily during her career as an educator and as a result of her involvement with the Marine Highway Historical Society, including records related to her teaching career, photographs, and material related to local history. Also included are publications produced by the Marine Highway Historical Society as well as layouts and preliminary copies. Contents also include scrapbooks, correspondence, advertisements, recipes, and material related to the Red Cross Society. In addition, fonds includes records acquired by Grace Forsythe and related to her aunt and uncle Cora (Harpell) and Sandy Myers, who owned the Salmon River House and with whom Grace lived for a time.

Notes area

Physical condition

Many of the scrapbooks are fragile, particularly those from 1915 and the 1930s.

Immediate source of acquisition

Records were donated to the Eastern Shore Archives by Grace and Michael Forsythe.

Arrangement

Publications produced by the Marine Historical Society have been arranged in chronological order.

Records transferred from NSARM that did not meet the mandate of the Eastern Shore Archives or were copies of material in the existing holdings were weeded and discarded or placed in the gift shop.

Associated materials

Related materials

Accruals

Further accruals are not expected.

General note

When appropriate, artefacts and documents were catalogued in the Artefacts Module and transferred into the care of the Memory Lane Heritage Village. Also, appropriate publications were catalogued in the Research Module and made available in the Reading Room of the Eastern Shore Archives, while other publications and documents were weeded and disposed of as they were not relevant to our mandate or were copies of material that was already part of the existing holdings. Publications transferred to the Research Module include Bluenose Ghosts, by Helen Creighton and Halifax County School Boards 1832-1982: A Review of Our Past, by C. P. J. Briggs.

Conservation

Records originally housed in metal-ringed binders were removed from binders but original order was maintained. Photographs were removed from scrapbooks but original order was maintained. Relevant photographs were scanned into photo database to increase accessibility and reduce handling of originals.